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Three Kinds of Dignity
Josiah Ober. Stanford University. [email protected]
Yale Law Workshop. December 10, 2009.
Draft of 2009.11.30
N.B. This paper is still very much a work in progress. Comments are commensurately
welcome.
Although modern political theory, from Rousseau and Locke to Rawls and
beyond, has centered on liberty and equality, some theorists (Charles Taylor, Stephen
Darwall, Jeremy Waldron) have recently called for renewed attention to the concept of
dignity. Contemporary work on dignity has tended to emphasize two kinds of dignity –
first, the Kantian conception of dignity as intrinsic worth (universal human dignity), and
next, a much earlier conception of dignity as outstanding honor or high standing
(aristocratic dignity). In his 2009 Tanner Lectures, Jeremy Waldron made a compelling
argument to the effect that universal human dignity can be understood as the
generalization to all humanity of the high standing associated with aristocratic dignity. I
suggest here that theoretical and historical discussions of dignity would benefit from
attention to a third form of dignity: civic dignity understood as a set of democratic
practices informed by law and sustained by political culture. Conceptually and
historically, civic dignity stands between aristocratic and universal dignity. It clarifies the
reciprocal roles of law and political culture in sustaining a stable regime of dignity among
many persons with unequal social power. Finally, attention to civic dignity enables us to
address a problem in non-ideal theory: Because liberty and equality cannot
simultaneously be maximized in a given society, a regulatory principle is needed if
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 1
liberty and equality are to be optimized. Civic dignity is well suited to playing this
regulatory role.i
This paper sketches a non-ideal, neo-classical theory of civic dignity, a theory that
is compatible with human rights, yet also offers democratic citizens practical guidance in
managing the competing demands of liberty and equality. The argument is premised on
several assumptions, each borrowed from classical Greek political thought: First, the
fundamental question of ethics concerns what it is for a life to go well.ii Next, because
humans are social beings in a very strong and special ways, ethics is inseparable from
politics. And finally, we will be better able to understand politics if we pay proper
attention to history while avoiding reductive forms of historicism. The argument is,
therefore, at once eudaimonist, political, and historical.iii
Part 1 defines dignity as non-humiliation and non-infantilization, and posits a
developmental relationship between aristocratic, civic, and universal human dignity. Part
2 argues for a close conceptual and historical relationship between civic dignity and
democracy, and shows how civic dignity provides foundations, in the form of rules and
cultural habits, for a dynamically stable democracy. Part 3 argues that defending dignity
among citizens yields principles for regulating liberty and equality. Part 4 describes how
civic dignity emerged in classical Athens with the generalization of the high standing that
is central to aristocratic dignity. Part 5 suggests that that the practice of civic dignity in
Athens facilitated the recognition of dignity as a universal attribute of humanity. Part 6
concludes that, while there is nothing inevitable about the historical development of civic
dignity from aristocratic dignity, and civic dignity does not inevitably lead to recognition
of dignity as a universal attribute of humans, the developmental scheme sketched in Parts
4 and 5 need not be unique to the Greek case.iv
1. Dignity defined
Living with dignity means, figuratively and literally, holding one’s head up in the
company of others. This entails having recognition from others, having their respect,
having a say in decisions, and having responsibility for one’s decisions. Like liberty,
which has been variously defined by contemporary theorists as “non-interference”
(Berlin) or “non-domination” (Skinner and Pettit), dignity may best be expressed by what
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 2
it stands against: Dignity can be defined as non-humiliation and non-infantilization. Our
dignity is threatened, we risk humiliation and infantilization, when our presence goes
unacknowledged, when we are unduly subject to the paternalistic will of others, and
when we are denied the opportunity to employ our reason in making choices that affect
us. A final premise of my argument, for which it seems unnecessary to argue here, is that
when humiliation and infantilization are systematic and inescapable, lives go badly.v
Dignity is a social value and cannot be reduced to an internal attribute of the
individual. It is not simply “self-esteem.” Dignity certainly involves self-respect – we
retain an irreducible core of inviolable human dignity no matter what we suffer. For
moral saints, like Socrates, that may be enough. But for most of us, living with dignity
involves the regard in which we are held and how we are treated by others. Having
dignity is manifest in how we act toward others, and in how they act toward us. Dignity
is, in substantial measure, a matter of the recognition and respect we accord to one
another.vi
It is because we live in communities, structured by rules, that the ethical question
about lives going well becomes a question for political theory. As individuals, our lives
will go well only if we can, together, create and preserve the relevant political conditions.
Democracy claims to be superior to other forms of government because (inter alia) it
employs public authority to provide political conditions that offer each of us as
individuals, and all of us together as a community, a better chance for our lives to go
well. These democratic political conditions include freedom of speech and association,
and equality of participatory opportunity. These conditions are grounded (so I will argue)
in civic dignity. In turn, democracy, as a form of public authority, is robustly supported
only when “living with dignity” is an commonly-held aspiration and expectation.
Democracy provides citizens with the institutional and ideological means by which their
dignity can be defended, and by which slights to their dignity may be rectified.vii
In developmental terms, civic dignity, i.e. dignity among and defended by
citizens, stands between aristocratic and human dignity.viii Democracy generalizes the
high standing that is the salient feature of aristocratic dignity and distributes it as civic
dignity equally among citizens. Civic dignity, once generalized among a body of citizens,
in turn facilitates recognition of the dignity of others, those outside the citizen body.
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 3
Aristocratic dignity, that is, dignity construed as honor or high standing, is a very
old concept. It is clearly visible in archaic aristocratic societies, notably the society
depicted in Homeric epic, although it is certainly not limited to the distant past.ix In a
system of aristocratic dignity, my dignity is based on the place (rank or status) I hold in a
hierarchical social order, and on others’ acknowledgement that I am worthy of that place.
The ultimate goal is to be “best.” The fraught question, “who is the best of the
Achaeans?” (Agamemnon because he commands most men? Achilles because he is the
greatest warrior?) drives the action of the Iliad (Nagy 1979). In a system of aristocratic
dignity, recognition arises from vertical relationships, from structured inequality. Those
beneath me in the social order offer me their deference: They recognize my superiority,
as I offer deference to and recognize the superiority of those above me. This means that
relations among persons of similar rank (e.g. Agamemnon and Achilles) is inherently
precarious: a precarious equality may be achieved but it is always threatened by ongoing
contests seeking to establish who is best. Aristocratic dignity is sustained by patronage
and is troubled by equality.
Aristocratic dignity is, by definition, a scarce social resource and it is redistributed
by high-risk and zero-sum contests. Preserving my aristocratic dignity is ultimately my
own personal responsibility. I must be able to demonstrate that I deserve my place and
only those with whom I have a strong personal relationship (say: my kinsmen and my
clients: Achilles’ Myrmidons) will help me to defend it. Because my dignity is fragile, I
must remain vigilantly on guard against slights and affronts, as others seek to increase
their shared of goods and their social position at my expense. I must be ready to protect
my dignity, with violence if need be, against any hint of presumed superiority from my
peers. As a result, social interaction among peers is marked by feuding, dueling, and
high-stakes contests of insults (flyting: Martin 1989).
Yet threats also arise from below and I must also enforce deference from those
beneath me on the social scale. Society is therefore characterized by systematic
expressions of disrespect (ritualized and violent) toward inferiors, who must be “kept in
their place” if they are not to threaten the dignity of those above them (cf. Odysseus’
beating of Thersites in Iliad book II). Well-known ancient examples of how aristocratic
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 4
dignity leads to political crisis include Achilles’ catastrophic anger (motivated by
Agamemnon’s appropriating his war-prize) in the Iliad and Julius Caesar’s choice in 49
BC to overthrow the Roman Republic rather than to accept a slight to his dignity (Latin:
dignitas).x Although some features of aristocratic dignity will almost certainly persist in a
democracy, democratic authority and culture are hostile to its most salient feature: that
social and political relations are defined in the first instance by hierarchy and deference.xi
Universal human dignity needs little introduction here. This is dignity construed
as a right (or as the foundational premise of rights), possessed by each and every one of
us as a facet of our humanity. Universal human dignity inverts the logic of aristocratic
dignity. The strong are regarded as having done wrong if and when they act arrogantly or
violently toward the weak. Human dignity is not a scarce resource, insofar as it is
universally and equitably distributed. No one possesses more of it than anyone else, and
so there is no “market” in human dignity, and no need for contests. The concern for
recognition in universal human dignity is omni-directional: all persons, everywhere, are
expected to recognize everyone else’s dignity, and therefore to treat all others in ways
with due respect.xii
The concept of universal human dignity is obviously highly salient today. It is the
dignity proclaimed in Article 1 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and in the first paragraph of the German Constitution. The systematic violations of
human dignity by American prison guards at Abu Ghraib led to widespread revulsion and
outrage in both the US and among the international community. Even if, counterfactually, the government of the United States could have shown that no serious physical
harm had been done to prisoners – that they had only been humiliated and infantilized -it would remain the fact that they had been terribly mistreated. The systematic and willful
attacks on the human dignity of prisoners -- as well as the physical harms that they
suffered -- were widely and rightly regarded as crimes against humanity.
Yet despite the salience of universal human dignity, despite its prominence in
international law and the purchase it gains on our contemporary moral sensibilities, there
remains a practical question of who will be motivated, under what circumstances, to act
in defense of others’ human dignity.xiii Because it is universal, responsibility for the
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 5
defense of human dignity is also diffuse. Ironically and terribly, just as in the case of
aristocratic dignity, when it comes to a crisis we may find that no one, other than those
with whom we have personal relationships, comes to our defense when our human
dignity is threatened: The failure of the contemporary international community,
committed in principle and bound by international covenants to defend universal human
dignity, to prevent gross assaults on human dignity is widely acknowledged as a pressing
issue lacking an obvious solution.
Democracy is compatible with an assumption of the universality of intrinsic
human dignity. I will argue, below, that democracy can facilitates recognition of human
dignity. Yet the concept of human dignity does not, in principle, demand democracy –
indeed its premises of universality and inherency mean that there ought to be no special
relationship between human dignity and any given decent and legitimate form of political
authority.xiv
2. Civic dignity and democracy
Civic dignity is intimately bound up, historically and conceptually, with
republican forms of government and especially with democracy. Insofar as civic dignity
implies extensive and reciprocal and political relations, it cannot be reduced either to
aristocratic or to universal human dignity. Classical civic dignity generalizes the high
standing of archaic aristocratic dignity among an extensive body of citizen. Civic dignity
is available to and protected by free citizens who are equal before the law and have an
equal opportunity to participate in a civic realm of debate and decision. Civic dignity,
once instantiated in law and habitual behavior, is a common pool resource, jointly
possessed a citizen body. The result of moving from a realm of hierarchy “all he way
down” to that of democratic freedom and political equality is that dignity is transformed,
from scarce resource distributed by competitive zero-sum games, to a common pool
resource sustained and enlarged by a coordination game. The institutions of a wellstructured democracy provide robust incentives for individual citizens (qua citizens and
qua magistrates of the state), common knowledge among citizens, and focal points
facilitating coordinated efforts among citizens to defend the highly-valued common
resource against encroachment. Civic dignity is thus resistant to degradation via
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 6
commons tragedy. Civic dignity does not require a conception of universal human
dignity, but it readily coexists with it.
In a true democracy, the dignity of each citizen is assured by well publicized and
transparent rules governing behavior – rules that each citizen has a role in affirming. The
rules are relatively stable, but may be challenged and revised so as to accord better with
the evolving needs of the community. The rules are maintained, not only by public
officials, but also by the voluntary actions of ordinary citizens. Those actions are
motivated by the habits that are formed when we live according to rules that we, as
citizens, share in making and affirming. Citizen dignity is robust because it is protected
by rules and by the cultural habits and interests of those who make, affirm, revise, and
obey the rules.
Like aristocratic and universal human dignity, an individual’s civic dignity is
gained and sustained by having the recognition and respect of others. Civic dignity differs
from aristocratic dignity in that its defense is the responsibility of a clearly defined set of
people who need have no personal ties or deep social relationship to individuals whose
dignity is threatened: As a member of a democratic community, when my civic dignity is
threatened, I can call upon my fellow citizens to defend me – most obviously, today, in
the guise of my peers sitting as a jury in a court of law.xv
Standing up to those who seek to humiliate others requires a certain level of
courage and thus the defense of civic dignity requires the cardinal virtue of courage from
citizens (cf. Balot 2004). Yet civic dignity does not place an extraordinary burden of
courage on citizens: no one need be super-courageous so long as many citizens can and
do coordinate their actions in response to dignitary threats. As a citizen of a well-ordered
democracy, I can reasonably expect members of my community to act in defense of my
dignity because they recognize that to do so is ultimately in their own interest as well as
in mine – it is in their interest as individuals who may in turn be threatened by the
arrogance and violence of the strong, who are concerned with the defense of their own
dignity, and who recognize that defense of dignity requires the aid of fellow citizens.
Civic dignity is thus at once reciprocal and rational.xvi
In civic dignity the responsibility of a group of civic peers to maintain the dignity
of each and all is specified in law and in political culture. The law serves as a focal point
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 7
(Sowell 1980) enabling the actions of fellow citizens to be effectively coordinated (cf.,
North and Weingast 1989, Weingast 1997) Collective action in defense of dignity is
facilitated when mutual responsibility is a matter of common knowledge among citizens;
that is: I know it, and you all know it, and I know that you all know that I know it, and so
on (Chwe 2001). Common knowledge regarding dignity is promoted by democratic
political culture. Because the mutuality of responsibility for responding to dignitary
threats is common knowledge, when I choose to act in another’s defense I can assume
that my choice accords with the preferences and interests of my fellow citizens, and my
actions will be coordinated with theirs. By coming to another’s defense I am not,
therefore, naively subjecting myself to a “sucker’s payoff.” And so, once again, our
collective dignity, as a citizen body, is guaranteed by the rational commitment of each
individual to the system that guarantees his and her own welfare.
The responsibilities of citizenship that emerge within a regime of civic dignity
include, as we have seen, respect and recognition of others. Respect and recognition
among an extensive population of diverse individuals entails, in turn, the virtue of selfrestraint (in classical ethics: sôphrosunê). As citizens, we must voluntarily restrain
ourselves from indulging in actions that would wrongly compromise other people’s
dignity – even when acting arrogantly towards them might please us (perhaps because we
are still attached to some aspects of aristocratic dignity). Yet once again, rationality
limits the demands placed on virtue. As citizens, we rationally restrain ourselves from
arrogant behavior for three overlapping reasons: First, because we expect that we will be
sanctioned for it. Next, because we have come to believe that it is in our real, long-term
interest to deny ourselves short-term gratification at others’ expense. And third, once we
have internalized the value of dignity and have been habituated to it, acting arrogantly is
no longer a source of pleasure for us.xvii
In a well-ordered democracy, then, citizens are mutually responsible for the
establishment and maintenance of one another’s civic dignity. They know that as a matter
of law, culture, and common knowledge. And they rationally and habitually choose to act
in a virtuous manner. This virtuous cycle of reinforced mutual responsibility is further
underwritten by the idea of the democratic community as a common public good, and by
the realization that each citizen potentially has something of value to contribute to the
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 8
good of the community. Our potential contribution, as citizens, is often in the form of
what we know – our unique and valuable technical, social, and tacit knowledge. In order
for that special knowledge to be freely offered by its individual possessors, and readily
taken up by others, we, the citizens, must treat one another with mutual respect. My
contribution to the common good will be limited to the degree that I anticipate that I will
be ignored or shown disrespect when I offer to contribute. But when I anticipate that my
contribution will be taken in the right spirit, accorded recognition and respect by my
fellows, I have good reason to contribute freely. Likewise, insofar as I recognize the
potential value of what others contribute, I will accord them recognition and respect.
And so, the right sort of democratic community develops a virtuous and self-enforcing
equilibrium, in which the civic dignity of each and all is securely protected, by rules and
by the actions of others. Each acts to defend the regime of civic dignity because it is
taken as the right thing to do, and recognized as being in his or her own best interest, as
well as in the interest of the community.xviii
The key to our civic dignity in a democracy is therefore an agreement on right
action (in respect to dignity and threats to it). That agreement is strengthened by the
coordination game: by mutual recognition of common interests and mutual responsibility
for maintaining the beneficial equilibrium. Each of us acknowledges that we have some
duties to one another and to the community. If each of us fulfills those duties, then our
own dignity is sustained. Moreover, the community does well and becomes a place in
which each of us has an enhanced opportunity to live well. If we coordinate our behavior
by using legal rules as focal points for aligning choices and actions, then no one gets a
sucker’s payoff and no one is left unprotected -- no matter how individually weak he or
she may be. It is thus in the interest of each citizen to sustain the system, and to
participate in blaming and sanctioning those who fail to do their part, while praising and
rewarding those whose service is especially fine.xix
3. Dignity as a regulatory principle
So far I have been focusing on how a democratic community of free and equal
citizens can sustain a regime of civic dignity as a virtuous, dynamic, and self-enforcing
equilibrium, thereby underwriting each individual’s hopes that his or her life will go well
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 9
in a community that does well as a collectivity. Civic dignity is associated with
democracy for an additional reason, having to do with risk. It is in the realm of chance
and risk that civic dignity comes to play a regulatory role, potentially allowing for the
optimization of liberty and equality.
As we have seen, living a dignified life entails non-infantilization; if we are to
live with dignity we must have the opportunity to make (and contribute to) choices that
affect us. Yet everyone is endemically exposed to chance and risks because we cannot
completely control our environment. There is always the chance that unpredictable
natural events will upset our best individual and collective planning. Living with dignity
means taking some chances and accepting the associated risks as a matter of choice. We
calculate risk by using our humanly distinctive capacities to reason, to communicate, and
to assess the plans of others based on private and public information. In a democracy
public information includes well-publicized and transparent rules and common
knowledge of cultural habits. Risk calculations do not eliminate contingency; genuinely
complete information is impossible to come by. And this means, in practice, that we will
constantly be making decisions, great and small, public and private, that are based on
incomplete information and thus on imperfect risk assessment. We know our assessments
are inevitably imperfect, but they are not simply irrational if they are based on good
public information.
People are diverse in many ways; some people tolerate higher levels of risk than
do others. It is a part of living with dignity that we remain free, in many spheres, to
decide whether to do something or not to do it, based in part on how much risk we are
willing to take on. We all know that the potential profit or loss following from a decision
will be determined in part by the level of risk. If the game is not rigged, if the system in
which we are taking our chances is a fair one, if the public information we are using in
our calculations is accurate, then the more risk we assume, the greater is the potential
upside profit. Given the importance of public information in risk assessment, all citizens,
especially public officials, are responsible for making relevant information available to
one another: We are all responsible for openness, sincerity, and honesty in our public
dealings. Our dignity is mutually preserved – we avoid the humiliation that comes of
being treated as a sucker -- when each of us has access to the relevant information that
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 10
allows us to make a reasonable calculation of the potential costs and benefits of a given
action. Access to relevant information provided by all and to all is therefore an essential
feature in the preservation of civic dignity.xx
This line of thought yields two further conclusions. First, our civic dignity is
threatened by public deceptions that trick us into accepting risks we would not have taken
had we been in possession of good information. Second, civic dignity is threatened by
public paternalism that seeks to eliminate all effects of chance and risk from our lives.xxi
Civic dignity demands that we not be over-exposed to unchosen risks by the
actions of public authorities. One way that we, as citizens, may be exposed to unchosen
risks is when public officials deny us access to relevant information, or present us with
false information, when proposing a risky course of public policy. A government that
willfully misinforms its citizens offers them disrespect. It refuses to recognize their
standing as citizens. It fails to treat them as dignified choice-makers, who might or might
not be willing to assume certain risks (e.g. undertaking a war). It treats them rather as
infants who deserve no real choice in the matter. When the truth comes out, when the
government offers no explanation for its actions, when we as citizens fail to blame and to
demand an account from culpable government officials, we suffer collective public
humiliation. The systematic misinformation that was foisted upon the American citizenry
(as well as to the rest to the world) by the George W. Bush administration as a
justification for the American invasion of Iraq, was, when viewed in this light, an attack
on civic dignity. Infantilizing and humiliating American citizens (among others) by
willful misinformation was, I suggest, of a piece with the use of humiliation and
infantilization as methods of torture by the same American administration.xxii
Living a dignified life involves the opportunity to calculate risks based on public
information, to make choices, and to act accordingly. Any system of public authority that
deprives us of all opportunity to take calculated risks therefore assaults our dignity. A
paternalistic government that intervenes in our lives in order to prevent us from taking
any sort of risk effectively treats us as infants. Defense of dignity does not eliminate a
democracy’s legitimate authority to limit some forms of personal risk-taking: For
example, our dignity is not compromised when we are legally required to use seat belts
when driving: in this case the imposition is slight and the joint and several benefit is
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 11
obvious. But civic dignity does limit the scope of public authority: To the extent that a
regulation aimed at limiting risk verges upon paternalism, it is rightly regarded as
illegitimately encroaching on civic dignity.xxiii
In common with rights-based theories of justice, a theory of civic dignity places
great value on both liberty (of choice) and equality (of standing and opportunity). But
how do we choose the correct course of action when liberty and equality come into
conflict? The threat that paternalism offers to civic dignity provides one line of argument
against strong forms of egalitarianism that seek entirely to eliminate the effects of chance
from people’s lives. The policies that necessarily emerge from attempts either to expunge
all effects of chance on opportunity (from individual genetic endowments, upbringing,
educational attainment, and so on), or to enforce equal outcomes, demand paternalistic
interventions in people’s lives that would gravely threaten civic dignity. Attending to the
value of civic dignity offers another reason that liberty must sometimes trump equality.
Civic dignity is based on the equal public standing of citizens as members of political
community, but it limits the scope of paternalism as a legitimate means to achieve the end
of social equality.xxiv
By the same token, however, civic dignity requires government to provide all
citizens with resources adequate to enable them to make consequential public and private
decisions and otherwise to participate as citizens in their community. Redistributive
public welfare policies that ensure that all are provided with adequate food, shelter,
security, education and health-care promote dignity by enhancing the opportunity for
individuals to make choices, take calculated risks, and participate in politics. Moreover,
by expanding the opportunity for calculated risk-taking, the public provision of adequate
means respects and leverages human diversity, and may thereby increase the store of
public goods. If all have a chance to take calculated risks that may benefit themselves and
society, then the community can more readily benefit by the diverse talents and the wide
range of risk-tolerance levels that will be distributed across its membership. Making
calculated risk-taking possible for all promotes innovation, which in turn may enable a
democracy to recoup the costs of open access, public provision of information, and
participatory decision-making. And thus democracy gains the resources necessary to
provide future generations of citizens with the means to participate in public affairs and
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 12
to make their own choices about the risks they will take. Public provision of goods that
ensure a reasonable opportunity for private risk-taking and political participation by
individual citizens thus provides arguments against strong forms of free-market
libertarianism. In this case civic dignity limits individual liberty in favor of redistribution
aimed at ensuring the equality necessary for citizens to make choices and to participate
fully in their community.xxv
4. Dignity in classical Greece
The practice of civic dignity emerged in classical Athens, in close association
with democracy in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. In the immediate aftermath of the
Athenian Revolution of 508 B.C., all males then resident in Athenian territory became
citizens -- that is, full members of the community with substantial immunities and
participation rights. In effect, the native male community collectively took for itself,
jointly and severally, the high standing once reserved for a few members of an elite of
birth and wealth. Civic dignity was promoted and defended by the Athenian democracy’s
expansive conception of citizenship. Athenian concern for civic dignity was manifest in
new democratic rules and an emergent political culture. Moreover, because Athens there
was no property qualification for active citizenship, some citizens were much richer,
better educated – and thus had substantially greater access to social power -- than others.
Thus there remained the danger that the stronger members of the citizen body would seek
to humiliate or infantilize their weaker fellows. If it was to be sustained, civic dignity
thus had to be actively defended by laws backed up by habits of behavior. The
development of democratic Athenian law and public discourse can be understood, at least
in part, as a successful drive on the part of the ordinary citizens of Athens to build an
institutional and political-cultural system that effectively protected the dignity of all
citizens.xxvi
Democracy did not drive out aristocratic dignity, but it changed the way in which
honor was gained and how claims to merit special consideration could legitimately be
expressed in public. With the consolidation of Athenian democracy, traditional
aristocratic values (e.g. eugeneia: high birth-status, kalokagathia: inherent excellence
manifest in physical beauty, andreia: manly courage) were appropriated by democratic
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 13
discourse (in Assembly and law courts) and generalized as values appropriately
possessed by all good citizens. Democratic rules and ideology emphasized the conjoined
values of the liberty (eleutheria) of the citizen and equality among citizens (key terms
were isonomia: equality before the law, isopsêphia: equality of vote, isêgoria: equality in
respect to pubic speech). The laws of the democracy criminalized (notably in the law
against hubris, considered below) the expression of social superiority (humiliation by
word and deed) that was the behavioral foundation of archaic aristocratic society.
Wealthy Athenians were now expected to demonstrate their love of honor (philotimia) by
providing resources to the community in excess of their legal obligations. The
community in turn expressed its appreciation with public expressions of approval: most
notably, inscriptions recording public decrees recognizing the generosity and publicspiritedness of elite public benefactors.xxvii
A speech of prosecution, written by the orator-politician Demosthenes for a
criminal trial in 346 B.C., provides a window into the mature democratic understanding
of civic dignity and the role of the law and political culture in sustaining it. The
defendant, a prominent Athenian politician named Meidias, was accused of violating the
norms of dignity – Demosthenes repeatedly describes Meidias’ public behavior as hubris:
willful and harmful infliction of humiliation upon another. At the conclusion to his
speech, Demosthenes (21.221) reminded the citizen-jurors of the sense of the security
(bebaiotês) in which each Athenian “goes on his way”:
Consider: in a moment, when the court rises, each of you will go away home, not
wondering whether it will be someone friendly or someone unfriendly who will
meet you on the way, or if he will be big or small, or if he will be strong or weak,
or anything of that sort. Why so? Because in his heart [each citizen] knows, and is
sure, and has put his trust in the constitution, that no one will take hold of him, or
be insolent to him, or hit him.
Demosthenes’ point is that the individual citizen can walk down the street with his head
up. He can go about his public and private business without worrying about threats to his
dignity – without fear of humiliation. And this, was, according to Demosthenes, because
of Athens’ democratic rules and cultural habits. The rules and the habit of acting in
support of them were, for Demosthenes, mutually reinforcing. In his peroration,
Demosthenes offers a theory of law and collective action:
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 14
For in fact, if you cared to consider and investigate the question of what it is
that gives power and control over everything in the polis to those of you
who are jurors at any given time ... you would find that the reason is not that
you alone of the citizens are armed and mobilized in ranks, nor that you are
physically the best and strongest, nor that you are youngest in age, nor
anything of the sort, but rather you'd find that you are powerful through the
laws. And what is the power of the laws? Is it that, if any of you is attacked
and gives a shout, they'll come running to your aid? No, they are just
inscribed letters and have no ability to do that. What then is their motive
power? You are, if you secure them and make them authoritative whenever
anyone asks for aid. So the laws are powerful through you and you through
the laws. You must therefore stand up for them in just the same way as any
individual would stand up for himself if attacked; you must take the view
that offenses against the law are common concerns... (223-225).
Demosthenes’ description of a world in which relatively poor and weak citizens
went about their daily business with their heads held high, with little concern that they
might be subject to dignitary threats on the part of the strong, contrasts sharply with the
conditions of pre-democratic Athens. The archaic Athenian poet-lawgiver Solon writes
of evil conditions (which he sought to correct by his laws) in which wealthy and powerful
Athenians readily enslaved their poorer and weaker fellow Athenians, and weak
Athenians, for their part, “trembled at the whims of their masters” (quoted in [Aristotle]
Constitution of Athens 12.4). Solon’s sharply framed poetic image conjoins humiliation
(trembling) with infantilization (the master’s whim). By seeking an end to those
conditions of systematic humiliation and infantalization, Solon’s law code set Athens on
the road to civic dignity. Three generations later, in 508 B.C., the ordinary people of
Athens rose up in arms, defying elite leaders and risking vengeance by the powerful
Spartans, to establish a regime of greater collective dignity. They rose up against the
threat of return to conditions in which free men would tremble at the whims of masters
and in anticipation of a community in which the dignity of citizens would be secure.
The result was a new democratic political order that, over the next 180 years,
systematically promoted mutual respect and recognition among citizens, while enhancing
opportunities for public participation and private risk-taking across the citizen population.
The democracy enforced laws criminalizing willful disrespect (hubris). It promoted
mutual recognition by bringing together citizens from different walks of life in new
institutions (artificial tribes, an agenda-setting council, people’s courts). By instituting
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 15
new forms of social insurance (e.g. support for orphans and the handicapped), the
democracy enabled citizens to take more calculated risks, individually and collectively.
One indication that Athens’ democratic regime effectively defended civic dignity is the
absence of evidence for personal patronage at Athens. Most reasonably well documented
societies of classical antiquity, for example Sparta and Rome, were grounded in personal
patronage and they offer rich case studies in how patronage operates. In both Sparta and
Rome the immunities and participation rights associated with citizenship remained
limited, and Spartan and Roman societies, and dignity they promoted, remained heavily
aristocratic. By contrast, historians have searched in vain for evidence of patron-client
relationships in democratic Athens, where a strong form of civic dignity was the
norm.xxviii
Elite attachment to aristocratic dignity was never eliminated at Athens. In his late
classical work, The Characters, Theophrastus introduces us to “The Oligarchic Man”
who feels himself shamed when "some scrawny unwashed type" sits next to him in the
citizen Assembly (26.5). In two anti-democratic coup d’états of the late fifth century,
disaffected elites attacked civic dignity by seeking to undermine the capacity of
Athenians to take calculated risks based on public information: In 411 the oligarchs
employed terroristic assassination deliberately aimed at undermining common knowledge
of political preferences among citizens. Once in power they rewrote the citizenship list,
but withheld the essential public information of “who is now a citizen?” Likewise, the
oligarchic Thirty who took control of the government in 404 stripped citizenship from
most natives, withdrew all legal protections from non-citizens, and struck men from the
citizen rolls at whim. The Thirty at Athens modeled themselves on the Spartans, who had
perfected the use of humiliation and infantilization to control a subject native population
of so-called “helots.” Sparta’s helots were humiliated, for example, by being forced to
drink great quantities of alcohol: drunken helots, staggering and vomiting, were used as
object lessons in the value of self-restraint for young Spartans. Helots were infantilized
by being subject to systematic terror-killing in the institution the Spartans called the
Krypteia: “The Secret Thing.” The radical uncertainty in which helots lived their
unhappy lives was the foundation of the Spartan regime of aristocratic dignity.xxix
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 16
5. Civic dignity and human dignity
It is not accidental that after the Athenian democrats overthrew the Spartanmimicking Thirty, the restored democracy was dedicated anew to the idea that clear
public rules are an essential foundation of democracy.xxx The Athenian regime of
democratic law and culture remained focused, in the first instance, on civic dignity for
citizens and defended by citizens. Yet dignity was, at least in principle, defended well
beyond the ranks of citizens. In the same speech (21.48-50) in which he reminded jurors
of the meaning of their secure possession of civic dignity, Demosthenes noted that
Athenian law protected “any person, either child or woman or man, free or slave,”
against intentional disrespect (hubris) and other unlawful (paranomon) treatment.
Demosthenes notes that the Athenians “do not think it right to treat with disrespect even
the slaves whom they acquire by paying a price for them, but have publicly made this law
to prevent it.”xxxi
The law to which Demosthenes refers probably dates back at least to the fifth
century BC, since “The Old Oligarch” – an anonymous anti-democratic writer of the later
fifth century -- points out to his intended elite readers, that in Athens "you" are not
permitted (oute…exestin) to hit slaves and foreigners at will. Nor, he adds, will an
Athenian slave stand aside for you in the road. The Old Oligarch explains the Athenians
motive for this law against hitting at will as concern for providing a sort of public risk
insurance. He points out that lower-class Athenian citizens could not be readily
distinguished, by dress or appearance, from slaves and resident foreigners. Hence, he
says, if powerful men were allowed to please themselves by striking slaves or foreigners
at will, they might mistakenly strike an Athenian citizen (1.10). And so, claims the Old
Oligarch, it was in order to ensure their own security that the Athenian citizenry forbade
mistreatment of slaves and foreigners.xxxii
We cannot hope to recover the actual motives and intentions of the legislator who
wrote the Athenian law against hubris to include non-citizens, or of the Athenian citizens
who affirmed it. Regardless of the Athenians’ actual legislative intent, their extension of
some legal protection to non-citizens points to how the recognition of dignity as a general
attribute of humans might arise from active defense of the “common pool resource” of
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 17
civic dignity. The idea that each human being naturally possesses an inherent dignity was
developed and widely disseminated by the ancient Stoics. Stoicism began with Zeno of
Citium, who lived as a resident foreigner in Athens beginning in about 300 B.C. – an era
in which perhaps half of the Greek city-states had democratic governments. If we had
more than mere fragments of Zeno’s Republic, it might be able to say more about how
the lived experience of civic dignity affected the early philosophical development of the
concept of inherent human dignity.xxxiii
6. Conclusions
Jeremy Waldron argued in his 2009 Tanner Lectures that the modern conception
of human dignity generalizes to all of humanity the high standing once reserved for a
narrow elite in archaic systems of what I have been calling aristocratic dignity. I think
that Waldron’s argument is right. Yet I have sought to show that a step may be missing,
in that he process of generalization was anticipated, conceptually and historically, by the
generalization of high standing as civic dignity within a body of democratic citizens. The
concept of dignity as an inherent property of persons was developed and flourished in the
context of a Greek world that had come to have a relatively deep experience with civic
dignity. Likewise, the context in which the concept of human dignity gained common
currency in modernity, and was embedded as human rights in international law, was a
world in which democracies were increasingly prevalent and democratic citizenship was
increasingly understood as a precondition for individual and collective lives that go well.
I certainly do not wish to make a historicist argument to the effect that the
experience of civic dignity was a prerequisite for the emergence of the concept of
universal human dignity. Such a claim seems, in any event, implausible, given that
neither Zeno nor Kant had personal experience of active citizenship in a democratic civic
community. Yet it nevertheless seems a plausible (if yet unproven) hypothesis that a
background context of quite widespread experience of civic dignity as a product of laws
and associated political habits, and recognition of the value of civic dignity in enabling
individual and collective lives to go relatively better, provided a bridge across which high
standing was generalized from a tiny elite to all of humanity. What we might call the
normative victory of the moral concept of universal human dignity may owe something
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 18
to the historical experience of civic dignity. As we have seen, in classical Athens civic
dignity was secured by law and by a political culture that promoted the habit on the part
of citizens of willingly acting in support of the law. The practical victory of human rights,
as a general expectation of all persons, such that all are in fact secure in their high
standing, will ultimately depend on the development of a reliable and secure international
regime of law, and a generalization of the habit of acting in its defense.
Just as aristocratic dignity did not disappear with the rise of civic dignity, so too
civic dignity seems likely to remain salient in a world committed in principle to the value
of human dignity. I have also tried to show that, whatever its role in the successful
spread of the concept of human dignity, civic dignity is a valuable for non-ideal political
theory, inter alia because it can help to regulate the more extravagant theoretical claims
of both egalitarians and libertarians.
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 19
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J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 21
Ober. Three kinds of Dignity. NOTES.
i
Recent work on dignity includes Taylor 1994; Darwall 2006, 2007; Waldron 2007,
2008, 2009. Parts 4 and 5 of this paper are based in part on Ober 1996 (chapter 7:
originally published 1994), 2005 (chapter 5, originally published 2000). In ideal theory
(Rawls 1971) regulation is intrinsic to the basic scheme of distribution. The sort of nonideal theory I am concerned with here conjoins normative and positive political theory –
that is to say, the question of how societies can be as good as possible must be
approached in light of an acknowledgement that individual choices are informed (while
not fully determined) by rational self-interest and strategic calculation. My thanks to Paul
Gowder, Amanda Greene, and Matt Simonton, for comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. Thanks to Jeremy Waldron, Stephen Darwall, and Joshua Cohen for sharing their
work with me in advance of publication.
ii
One need not accept classical eudaimonism, much less the unity and singularity of the
human good (which some, but not all, contemporary philosophers have regarded as
fundamental to Aristotle’s own eudaimonism: Kraut 1989) to see the problem of ethics in
these terms; see, recently, Appiah 2005.
iii
The argument developed in this paper develops one leg of a neo-classical theory of
democracy, predicated on inherent human capacities, the moral value of dignity, and the
organization of useful knowledge. For two other legs of the argument, see Ober 2007a,
2008a, 2008b.The argument I develop here has a number of features in common with
Elizabeth Anderson’s (1999) democratic equality, and with Philip Pettit’s (1997)
republicanism.
iv
Like liberty and equality, the concept of dignity has a long and complex history.
Coincidentally all three terms have a Latin etymology: libertas, aequitas, dignitas. The
relevant Greek terms are eleutheria, isotês, timê. The Enlightenment conception of
inherent human dignity (on which, see below) is strongly associated with the doctrine of
inherent rights: for example, the UN Universal declaration on human rights, article 1:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” German Constitution,
Article 1, paragraph 1: "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall
be the duty of all state authority.” Rawls’ (1971) Theory of Justice proposed a formula for
managing liberty and equality (the priority of liberty and the difference principle), but in
Political Liberty Rawls (1996) abandoned the claim that this was an impartial and
universally valid solution.
v
My premises is that dignity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a life to go
well. It is worth noting that my argument (like Cohen 1997) starts within morality; I do
not, here, seek to show why respect and recognition are good, or why humiliation and
infantilization are bad. Liberty as non-interference: Berlin 1959; as non domination:
Skinner 1998, Pettit 1997. To renounce self-direction of one’s own life (by accepting
slavery) is to give up “one’s dignity as a man”: Rousseau, Social Contract (IV: Of
Slavery). Evidence that lives go worse (measured by health) in highly status-defined
situations: Marmot 2004, 2006.
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 22
vi
Social regard and recognition: Hegel Philosophy of Right; as visibility: Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man with D. Allen 2004. Dignity as a social relation, and a fundamental
condition (along with material welfare and autonomy): Cohen 1997; Darwall 2006.
Recognition, dignity, and group rights: Taylor 1994. Dignity, respect, and reciprocity:
Gutmann 1996.
vii
Democracy and dignity are reciprocally self-entailing: they may, paradoxically, be said
to be, mutually, one another’s preconditions. We escape paradox if we assume that
democracy is established when a rupture in pre-existing relations of power permit a
“glimpse” of what it would mean to have equal dignity: that glimpse of a desired
condition is what motivates collective revolutionary action. Democratic institutions are
then established in order (inter alia) to establish and defend a regime of civic dignity. The
habits of civic dignity developed by democratic citizens in turn provide the cultural
underpinnings that allow democratic institutions to continue to develop, and enables
democracy to survive crises.
viii
This standing-between is, as I will hope to show, both in the sense of a shield (that is,
protecting the weak against humiliation and infantalization) and a bridge (that is,
enabling the high standing of aristocratic dignity to be recognized as a universal human
right). This double sense of standing-between is already present in the poetry of the
archaic Athenian lawgiver, Solon, see Ober 2005, chapter
ix
Other examples arise from Hobbesian state-of-nature situations or “all the way down”
hierarchies: The hierarchical communities created by inmates of over-crowded American
prisons offer obvious and horrifying contemporary examples.
x
Achilles: Iliad Book 1. Caesar: Suetonius, Divus Julius, 33.
xi
Aristocratic critics of democracy, from Alcibiades (speech at Sparta in Thucydides), to
Aristotle’s theory of proportionate equality, to Tocqueville (and beyond) recognize this;
see further Ober 1998. Darwall 2007 (under the rubric of “honor respect”) and Waldron
2008 (under the rubric of “rank”) helpfully explore the terrain of what I am calling
“privilege dignity.”
xii
Most famously in Kant’s hugely influential conception of dignity as that which cannot
be assigned a price, and must be valued as an end in itself: “a human being regarded as a
person, that is, as the subject of morally practical reason, is exalted above all price...as an
end in himself he possesses a dignity by which he exacts respect for himself from all
other beings in the world" (Metaphysics of Morals 6:434-435).
xiii
Waldron 2007, 2009 points out the difficulties in operationalizing, in law, a fully
moralized (Kantian) conception of dignity; this is part of his justification for treating
dignity as “equal, high rank.” Pinker (2008) points out pernicious ways in which the
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 23
“squishy, subjective notion” of human dignity has been appropriated by religious
conservatives seeking to block scientific work on stem cells etc.
xiv
Although see Robert Post (2000) on potential conflicts between the free speech
requirements of democracy and human dignity from insult. Post offers a helpful analysis
of democracy, autonomy and dignity with consideration of Germany’s fundamental law.
xv
Note that here “impersonality” (I need not have a personal relationship with those I
expect to aid me) is not identical to “impartiality.” It is my fellow citizens (not simply my
fellow human beings), I call upon, and I expect aid from them because I believe that they
have a special concern for the welfare of a fellow citizen. This does not mean that they
are unconcerned for the welfare of non-citizens; see below.
xvi
Note that if we suppose that if arrogance goes unchecked the existing “civic equality
regime” will collapse, and if we further suppose that it can be expected to result in a
aristocratic dignity regime built on patronage, this amounts to dropping a sort of “veil of
ignorance” upon each and all. No one can predict where he will end up in the new
hierarchy. Those who possessed wealth or office in the old order may find themselves
particularly vulnerable, as the new leaders appropriate goods and offices to order reward
their clients. Moreover, if the new regime is less productive (because less Paretooptimized) than the old order, there will be less of everything: the extreme version of this
lowering of productive capacity due to lessened social cooperation is Hobbes’ state of
nature. The radical uncertainty about places in a new hierarchy is part of what makes the
democratic equilibrium self-enforcing – like Rawls’ veil, uncertainty about future
positions promotes pro-social choices. I owe this insight to Barry Weingast. The notion
that the weak rationally cooperate to restrain the strong was well known in Greek
political thought: cf. Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias.
xvii
Self-restraint/moderation (sôphosunê) is, of course, one of the four classical virtues
(along with courage, wisdom, and justice), a virtue that was manifest, in democratic
Athenian moral vocabulary, by the “middling/moderate/dignified” (metrios) citizen.
Here, and elsewhere, I am drawing on Aristotle’s (NE) theory of moral training by
habituation and practice (askêsis).
xviii
Value of knowledge: Ober 2008a. The basic idea is clearly articulated in, for
example, Pericles’ three speeches in Thucydides, books 1 and 2.
xix
Constitutional law as a focal point enabling coordination by citizens: Weingast 1997.
xx
Thus the recent (spring 2009) economic crisis, to the extent to which it was precipitated
by the failure of persons and institutions with regulatory and information-publicizing
responsibilities can be seen as a failure to treat others with the sort of respect and
reciprocal recognition essential to the maintenance of their dignity. We are humiliated
when we are treated as suckers by those we have reason to trust.
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 24
xxi
Paternalism and deception may, of course go hand in hand (think of George Orwell’s
1984). The important point is that both paternalism and deception are fundamentally
incompatible with the sort of civic dignity we ought to expect and demand from a real
democracy because they interfere with our opportunity to assess risks and to assume
responsibility for inherently risky courses of action.
xxii
Aristotle, Politics objects to public deception of citizens by rulers for reasons similar
to those argued here. His position is, of course, at odds with that of Plato in the Republic,
where Kallipolis is sustained by “noble lies.”
xxiii
Paternalism resists precise definition because paternalistic regulations (like acts of
hubris in classical Athens: see below) occur in varied contexts, such that the same
regulation might be paternalistic in one context but not in another.
xxiv
See, further, Anderson 1999. Luck egalitarians seek to avoid the problems associated
with equality of outcome by focusing on the value of equality of opportunity, which is
meant to ensure that people have real choices to make. The idea is that all begin at the
same point (say: identical genes, upbringing, education, wealth, and income; but who
chooses what these will be?); what they choose to do subsequently is their own
responsibility. Yet, as Anderson points out in response to her luck-egalitarian critics, the
strict brute luck/option luck distinction cannot hold up, since any point along the way
might be regarded as a new beginning, requiring a restart to perfect equality. The result
will be that individual choices have no impact, thus confounding the whole point of luck
egalitarianism, which was to preserve choice. The civic dignity argument is consistent
with Rawls’ (1971) deontological argument for the priority of liberty.
xxv
The value arises in several ways: if more diverse talents are developed, then more
opportunities will be identified and pursued. Diverse talents, once developed, can be
combined and cross-appropriated. And at the same time, the overall social risk pool is
diversified: the community becomes less vulnerable to over-specialization that may lead
to poor response to changed conditions. See in more detail, Ober 2008a.
xxvi
I have devoted a good part of my career to tracking this development. Athenian
revolution: Ober 2007b (with literature review); Democratic institutions: Ober 2008;
political culture: Ober 1989.
xxvii
Appropriation of aristocratic values and terms: Ober 1989, Whitehead 1993; law
against hubris: Fisher 1992; philotimia in the democratic state: Whitehead 1983. Public
benefactors: Domingo Gygax forthcoming.
xxviii
Patronage in classical antiquity: Wallace-Hadrill (ed.) 1989. No patronage at Athens:
Millett 1989.
xxix
The Athenian coups d’état and their aftermaths: Munn 2000; Wolpert 2002. Sparta:
Cartledge 2001.
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 25
xxx
The strongly “rule of law” centered discussion of the post-war legal reforms of
Ostwald 1986 should be read in conjunction with Lanni 2006, who argues that jury
discretion remained an essential element of the Athenian practice of law.
xxxi
Contrast Kant: Demosthenes imagines that putting a price on humans and dignity (of
a sort) are compatible: Demosthenes’ comment underlines both the recognition of
something like human dignity (even slaves ought not be unnecessarily humiliated) but
also the limited range of actions that recognition motivated.
xxxii
Cf. also Plato Republic book 8: democratic equality extends to women, foreigners,
slaves, and even domestic animals – who refuse to defer to by stepping aside in road.
Plato’s point is that the regime of dignity undermines deference.
xxxiii
Demosthenes and recognition of something akin to human dignity: Ober 1996
chapter 7, and especially Ober 2005 (chapter 5). Zeno’s political thought, and that of the
later Stoa: Schofield 1991. Here, and elsewhere, I use “recognition” deliberately – as
opposed to “form a belief about”; see Cohen 1997 on the distinction. I assume that the
value of human dignity is a moral fact. But, since it was unrecognized for most of human
history, it is not a self-evident fact. My suggestion is that civic dignity was important in
making human dignity recognizable, by undermining the “natural/inevitable” character of
aristocratic dignity and by demonstrating that equal dignity is possible among persons
who are unequal in obvious ways (in respect to wealth, strength, beauty, virtuousness,
and so on).
J. Ober. Three Kinds of Dignity. 26